[FLOTG] Chapter 4: Live-Stream Announcement

Shen Huai was a little moved. Song Xue-Yang's personal abilities were indisputable, his strategic command skills were the central pillar of Maple Moon, and the two of them were close friends with really great rapport. Of course Shen Huai would be willing to be on his team.

However, Maple Moon just wasn't his first choice.

Shen Huai did not want to reject him directly. [ I'm still considering. ]

The reply was swift. [ You're really planning to join a pro team? ]

Shen Huai: [ ...... ]

Every time he spoke with Song Xue-Yang, he would always unwittingly end up in the other's grasp.

Song Xue-Yang did not push the issue. [ It's fine. At your level, it'll be no problem for you to go to whichever team you want. Think it through carefully. ]

Shen Huai: [ Thank you. ]

[ But there won't be any team better for you than Maple Moon. ]

[ ...... ]

[ Since you plan to go pro, why don't you consider changing regions? There's only 1 month left for transfers. ]

This overlapped with Shen Huai's own thoughts. When he had first started playing "City of Despair", he had simply chosen a play region at random, only finding out later on that all the professional players were gathered in "Sailway City". However, he hardly had any time to rest while filming over these past few years, much less play games. Thus, he had not chosen to change regions, just continuing to play where he was.

But now that he was preparing to choose a team to join, he should indeed check out the professional region in advance.

[ I plan to do that. ]

Song Xue-Yang smiled. [ Then let me help you look for an account on the trading hub. ]

[ Ok. ]

In Maple Moon's training room, Song Xue-Yang cheerfully opened the official trading platform for "City of Despair".

Song Xue-Yang was definitely the youngest among all the captains of the professional teams. He was 21 years old and had already been captain for three years. He had a pair of smiling eyes and faintly upturned lips, which made him look like he was smiling even when he was expressionless. He was handsome, and there was a lovely mole beneath the corner of one of his eyes{泪痣: Literally translated as 'tear mole', as its position is reminiscent of a tear, this type of mole is considered auspicious by the Chinese and is treated as a beauty mark.}. His features alone had gained him a lot of female fans at his debut.

Right now, he was very pleased that Ash Wing had finally begun planning to become a professional player. His crescent moon eyes were happy slits, but no one could pass off the intent light shining from beneath his eyelids as gentle and harmless. Rather, he seemed like a cunning and calculative fox.

Vice-Captain Zhou Ning caught him browsing for accounts, and made the connection between this and the live-stream Song Xue-Yang had interrupted.

"You're helping Ash Wing look for an account? Is he coming to the pro region?"

The game accounts of "City of Despair" could not be transferred between regions. If one wanted to change play regions, one could only begin again from a new account or buy one from the trading hub. Although levelling up in "City of Despair" wasn't difficult, it was still a major undertaking to accumulate battle merits to trade for skill points. Playing from the start would take at least two or three months to build up an account, so purchasing an account was still more cost-effective.

Song Xue-Yang nodded as he clicked on the assassin profile displayed on the platform. "Ash Wing plans to join a pro team."

Zhou Ning's expression turned grave. "Ash Wing is strong. Any team he joins will be like a tiger gaining wings. Which team is he planning to join?"

Song Xue-Yang's curved eyes gazed at the screen, and he said with confidence, "Primo Wolf. Primo Wolf prioritizes melee combat as its core. It will be very easy for such a team to accommodate an assassin, and Captain Guan's personality will gel well with Ash Wing's."

Zhou Ning asked curiously, "How do you know Ash Wing will get along with him?"

Ash Wing had only live-streamed a handful of times and was an extremely mysterious figure. No one in the entire e-sports industry knew him, so there should be no reason Song Xue-Yang would know him that well either.

Song Xue-Yang pointed at his eyes. "Have you forgotten what is it I do?"

Zhou Ning's lips twitched.

How could he have forgotten? Their captain of Maple Moon, Song Xue-Yang, was from a family specializing in psychology, and he was a humanoid mind-reading machine whose hobby was to observe people.

"What do you think about this account? Max level, max skill points, with an upgraded weapon from the new season. The attributes of the equipment are also the same attack speed buff type that Ash Wing prefers."

Zhou Ning leaned closer to look. Even though it wasn't any godly account, the equipment was a full set and the skill points were maxed out, so it could be considered a rather finished account.

It's just that......

"This account is only selling for 1,000?" Zhou Ning stared dubiously at the price listed, but when he saw the ID of the character, he suddenly recalled something. "Isn't this account..."

Song Xue-Yang interrupted him, a gleam flashing across his narrowed eyes. "Shhh, Ash Wing will be mine."

Looking at his captain's radiant smile, Zhou Ning couldn't help but shiver.

Song Xue-Yang came off as friendly and polite, and he had a pure and harmless looking smile. However, anyone who has dealt with him would know that this man was an absolutely ruthless character who was meticulous in thought, and that he had needles hiding within his cotton-soft demeanour.

Just imagining the series of troubles Ash Wing would suffer after buying this account, Zhou Ning mentally lit a candle for him{为他点蜡: To light a candle for someone is to pray for their soul. Basically, Zhou Ning is pitying Ash Wing and wishes him luck.}. Who asked him to attract the attention of the so-called old fox of the league, Song Xue-Yang? Zhou Ning might as well go ahead and take some time to prepare a welcome gift for their new teammate now.

******

After taking a shower, Shen Huai laid on his bed and browsed the online forums. He already had a general understanding of all the professional teams of "City of Despair", and if there was one team he had to name as his ideal choice, it would have to be Primo Wolf.

Primo Wolf, BattleGod, and WG have always been the three top teams fighting to win the playoffs and even the finals of the World Tournament. They were about equally matched in strength.

Among them, the ace player of BattleGod, Xiao Zhang, played a qigong master. He was so powerful that the entire team tended to go with a 5-protect-1 strategy when fighting. Shen Huai's assassin lacked crowd control skills, so it would be tough for him to integrate into this team.

Meanwhile, WG's lineup was already very stable. Although their captain, Zhang Jia-Yan, kept inviting him to join them during his live-streams, Shen Huai knew very well that he had very little to contribute to this team.

The only one left then was Primo Wolf. It was a team which boasted the famous Three Swordsmen as their melee combat core. Moreover, this team had once had a formal assassin player in their roster, so if he could join Primo Wolf, Shen Huai would be able to display his abilities in full.

As for Maple Moon, the team Song Xue-Yang had invited him to join today, it was a very unusual team.

The origins of Maple Moon was strange and fascinating. At the beginning, the team had not been created to win, but to take advantage of the popularity of the nascent e-sports industry.

Investors had identified a market in the passionate fans of e-sports, and so had built an all-female team. The audition for the team was also very unusual ― a beauty pageant.

As long as they had fingers to tap on a keyboard and could make the characters move, they pass!

As for the rest, let's compare talents and vocals, and choose those with good figures and sweet voices. And after that, let's find a coach to provide some training for the game, pick out those whose skills look decent, and voila! Official members selected!

Last place in the competition? Not a problem! What's important is to participate. After all, we weren't planning to make money through winning games. Picking up some endorsements here and there, and selling some peripheral merchandise every so often... Are these not more profitable than winning games?

Perhaps this behaviour was seen as a grave insult to the intellect of the e-sports supporters, so Maple Moon was severely condemned by the people within the gaming industry. Under the pressure of public opinion, the club had no choice but to raise the selection standards of its players, but the threshold of good looks had not been changed.

Later on, e-sports started gaining more and more female fans, and Maple Moon evolved from an all-female team into a mixed idol team with various types of good-looking men and women. To some extent, the team was quite well regarded, but it was still overall more pretty than useful.

This situation continued until Song Xue-Yang appeared.

This handsome, gentlemanly young man was beloved by the club owner as soon as he joined the team. It took him only 3 months to walk out from the novice training camp, where he was then promptly promoted to captain. He then led Maple Moon into a clean sweep of all the various regional tournaments.

There were plenty of minor regional tournaments for "City of Despair", but any player with just the least bit of fame who participates would be heavily critiqued, let alone Song Xue-Yang who had led his whole pro team into the fray.

That year, the internet was flooded with swears and curses.

In his second year as captain, he recruited a batch of rookies and led his team into the top 8 of the professional league games.

Although his team was defeated in the first round of the top 8 matches, his ever-present smile but extremely tricky and efficient play style had sent chills down the spines of all of the pro teams.

Today, Maple Moon was already a staple within the top 8, with strength which ranked it around 5th or 6th among all the other pro teams. This year, they had finished solidly in 4th place in the National Championship finals, but it was still clear to see that they were a team with very unique style.

For example, the name of the team, Maple Moon, was actually derived from wordplay on a traditional poem describing the boundless beauty of nature.

For example, the vice-captain of the Maple Moon, Zhou Ning, was an artistically beautiful kind-hearted man with semi-long curly hair.

For example, one of Maple Moon's current members, Fan Jing-Ming, was 195cm tall and an ex-model!

......

Shen Huai did not look down on Maple Moon for this though, since appearances had nothing to do with skills after all.

However, Maple Moon was involved in many, many endorsement activities. The club put a lot of effort into cultivating the images of the players, setting up almost mandatory requirements for each player in terms of number of endorsements and live-stream durations. Additionally, the club would arrange photoshoots to produce individual photobooks for the players, record team documentaries, and even change the player-photo backdrop of the official Taobao shop for the club once a month!

If Shen Huai could have accepted all that, he would not have quit the entertainment industry to begin with. Thus, even though he felt apologetic towards Song Xue-Yang, he could only say to him...

Let us meet on the battlefield some day!

He opened the forum for "City of Despair", and surprisingly, it was filled with threads discussing his live-stream today.

―― Testing out the Blood-Blessed Blades Assassin!

―― Great God Ash Wing does it again! An analysis on the the playability of the "living-on-the-edge" assassin!

―― Test! Data cruncher takes you through the numbers to analyse the maximum damage bonus of Blood-Blessed Blades!

These few posts had been highlighted, prompting Shen Huai to click on them out of curiosity The OP{i.e. original poster} had analysed his operation in his live-stream today, and had calculated through data testing that the maximum damage of an assassin under Blood-Blessed Blades could go up to 600%. With that, even the assassin class which had been nerfed to shit could actually finish off an opponent with one combo.

After a series of analyses, the OP ended with a screenshot of his match records displaying his test runs in the Arena. The results were all red{i.e. the OP lost every match. lol.}, but the OP concluded confidently ― Theoretically Feasible.

The comments below the post was a sea of groans and laments.

[ OP you goof! Saying all that but not winning a single round! ]

[ Stop talking about it. I was so fired up by God Ash Wing's godly operation that I quickly challenged 10 matches in the Arena... my knees are busted from kneeling in prayer and I still didn't win a single match. This play style is too difficult! Every time, I'm killed by the opponent before I can even finish the combo. And I get mocked by the opponent too, fuck! ]

[ I get nervous every time my HP drops below 10%. I just wanna know, doesn't god ash wing feel bad seeing his screen flashing red? ]

[ Testing success in Warrior rank. Works like a charm against those who don't know the trick. Hahahaha! God Ash Wing made me believe in assassins again! ]

[ Hey upstairs{Referring to the poster immediately before this, since forum posts are nested in order.}, I can play well in Warrior rank even with my eyes closed, ok? This combo play by Ash Wing is really amazing, but there's just too little room for error, probably only just a few among the pro players can pull it off. I advise everyone not to believe in crooked paths. Stay true to the poison play style. That is the way for us mere mortals to survive. ]

[ As someone who hasn't seen the live-stream, I just want to watch God Ash Wing's godly operation just once!! God Wing, do you have Weibo? Even just an explanation of the moves will do! ]

[ Upstairs, wake up. God Wing doesn't even have a stable live-stream schedule. Don't even mention Weibo, no such thing! I also find it unbelievable. ]

The rest of the thread quickly shifted into grumbles and complaints about Ash Wing. His live-streams were too abrupt, not constant, not long enough, not often enough... the lines could almost be woven into a poem of discontent.

Shen Huai thought about how he had already declined all of his entertainment work and now had much more free time. Since he would be playing more often to train up his skills anyway, it wouldn't be a problem to live-stream as he played and tutor the audience.

And so, Shen Huai added a response to the thread.

―― Ash Wing here. I've seen the questions everyone has raised. I'll live-stream at 8pm tomorrow to explain in more detail about how to play with Blood-Blessed Blades. Thank you all for your support.

As soon as this was posted, the thread was instantly thrown into chaos.

[ Oh my god! Is this God Wing? Is this God Wing?! Happiness descends too suddenly! ]

[ Bro, aren't you afraid of being busted for bragging so hard? Hmph, and sounding so realistic too, you think I will fall for something like this... Dammit, I don't care! See you all at 8pm tomorrow! I'm going to save my seat in advance! ]

[ If upstairs is really great god Ash Wing, then this is the first time God Wing is announcing his live-stream in advance... everyone, we must all save our spots early! Even when God Wing doesn't announce his live-streams, his channel is bursting with people. There might not be room if we're late! ]

The thread then fell silent. Some people even secretly brought out their devices to enter the live-stream channel in advance. Who cares if it's real or fake? Just save a spot and then we'll see!

---

Previous: Chapter 3: Invitation
Next: Chapter 5: BattleGod's Ace

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